by Ralph Hayes
The Lawless Breed
When Wesley Sumner is released from prison, he and cellmate Corey Madison go in search of work as ranch hands. But their new-found freedom is short-lived when they are arrested for a crime they did not commit. And when Corey dies after a savage beating from their captors, Sumner vows revenge. However, his plans are thwarted when he learns that the two deputies who beat Corey have lost their jobs and are now themselves on the run from the law. And so begins a long hard journey, fraught with danger, as slowly but surely Sumner tracks down his friend’s killers.
By the same author
The Tombstone Vendetta
Fort Revenge
The Last Buffalo
Texas Vengeance
Coyote Moon
Rawhide Justice
The Lawless Breed
Ralph Hayes
ROBERT HALE
© Ralph Hayes 2017
First published in Great Britain 2017
ISBN 978-0-7198-2235-3
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Ralph Hayes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
CHAPTER ONE
A faint but definite stench of urine and dried sweat hung in the iron-barred cell like a perpetual reminder of grim reality. Age-old graffiti marred the gray walls, and rat droppings decorated the floor in a dark corner where a hole in the concrete served for a toilet.
On one wall, reclining on a lower bunk, Wesley Sumner turned a page of the book he was reading about the Mexican War. He had not known how to read or write when he entered this Texas facility several years ago, but had arduously taught himself until now; his skill in those areas was admirable to other inmates. Sumner looked up from the book now as he heard footsteps approaching his cell. In a moment, a husky guard stood outside the bars with a young inmate.
‘Wake up, Sumner. You got a visitor.’
A key clanged in the cell door and the two men entered. Sumner threw his book aside and sat up on his bunk.
‘I was told I’d be alone for these last days,’ he said in a rather deep voice. He was a tall, slim young man in his early twenties, with dark hair and eyes and a square, handsome face. His good looks had got him in trouble on his arrival at the prison, but after a deadly fight with another inmate that earned him a thick scar on his chest that he still bore, the other men in his cell block left him alone.
‘This here is Corey Madison,’ the burly guard said gruffly. ‘He gets out in a couple days, just ahead of you. His old cell is being hosed down.’
The boy named Corey looked about twelve to Sumner. Reddish hair. The vestiges of freckles. Not as tall as Sumner.
‘I hear you’re Sumner.’ Corey grinned at him. ‘Pleasured to meet up with you.’
Sumner stared coldly at him.
‘Shut up, Madison,’ the guard growled. He looked over at Sumner. ‘You behave yourself now, Sumner. He’ll be gone Thursday. He’s just a wet-behind-the-ears kid. Put up with him.’ He gave Sumner a hard grin. ‘We’d appreciate it.’
Sumner looked Corey over with disdain. ‘They said I’d finish it out alone.’ Quietly. To himself.
The guard gave him a sour look. ‘Behave.’ Then he turned and left the cell, the door clanging behind him.
Sumner sighed. ‘When you get into that upper bunk, try not to bring the whole thing down on me.’
The boy Corey was grinning again. ‘I’ll turn eighteen not long after I blow this joint. I can buy my own booze then.’
‘You’re only seventeen?’ Sumner said acidly. ‘You’re starling young, boy.’
‘I heard you come in here at the same age,’ Corey offered. He had leaned against the opposite wall. ‘What are you in for?’
Sumner looked up at him soberly. ‘Murder.’
A silence fell into the small room that seemed to erect a thick wall between them. After a long moment Corey said in a subdued tone, ‘Oh.’
Sumner lay back down and propped his head on two pillows, then pulled one out and threw it to Corey. ‘This one is yours. You ought to make up your bed.’
Corey nodded, and climbed up over Sumner. Sumner could feel him moving around up above for a few minutes, then it was quiet up there. It was rather early in the evening but Sumner hoped the kid went to sleep. In a few more minutes, though, Corey’s voice came to him from the upper bunk.
‘I got in a saloon fight,’ his high voice came to Sumner. ‘My sister Janie tries to keep me at home, but I don’t pay much attention. We live together, our folks bought it in that last influenza epidemic. You might have heard. Anyway, this cowpoke started on me, and we got into it. They didn’t arrest him. Just me. I got thirty days, and the local jail was full. So here I am.’
‘You’ve been here thirty days?’ Sumner said.
‘You wouldn’t have seen me. They wouldn’t let me mix.’
‘So you knocked a cowboy down.’ Smiling now in the semi-dark.
‘I think I broke his nose. I didn’t mean to.’
Sumner’s smile widened slightly. ‘Sounds like you got grit, kid.’
‘I don’t like to be hoorawed.’ A moment of silence. ‘You don’t seem like a killer.’
Sumner’s face went somber. ‘It’s not courtesy to yaw over another man’s sentence, boy.’
Up on the other bunk, Corey’s face flushed slightly. ‘Sorry.’
Another stony silence. But then, after a few minutes, Sumner broke it. ‘I was just sixteen. Living with my aunt. Like you, I had no parents. One day, three men rode up to our cabin. We offered them coffee and biscuits. When they were finished, they beat me so badly I couldn’t stand up. Then they tied me up and raped my aunt. All of them. They made me watch. Then they slit her throat. They were going to kill me too, but one of them said it was better this way. Then he laughed. And they laughed.’
When he paused for a moment, Corey thought he had never heard such a heavy silence.
‘It took me almost twenty-four hours to get loose from the ropes. Then I buried my aunt out in back of the cabin. And I made a pledge to her. I told her I’d find those men. If it took all my life.’
‘And you did find them,’ Corey suggested.
‘It took over a year. But I found two of them in a saloon. I had taught myself to shoot by then. It wasn’t a draw-down. I just executed them. The way you would step on a snake. I caught up with the last man on a ranch when he was out mending fence. I shot him and his mount. But that didn’t save me. The law found me buying groceries in a general store. I gave up without a fight.’
‘I was right,’ Corey’s voice came in the darkness. ‘You ain’t no killer.’
‘I’m being released on Saturday. Because of good behavior,’ Sumner finished. ‘They just turn you loose. They don’t even give you a horse. Most inmates have someone meeting them.’
‘But you don’t,’ Corey guessed.
‘I don’t know anybody,’ Sumner said. ‘But I like it that way.’
‘They’re setting me loose two days ahead of you,’ Corey said. ‘We could almost have gone together.’
‘I’m fine with alone,’ Sumner told him.
Corey hesitated. ‘Sure. Of course.’
‘Incidentally, kid.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re wrong about me.’
‘What do you mean, Sumner?’
‘I think I am a killer. If the situation demands it.’ Very quietly.
‘What kind of “situation”?’
Su
mner folded his hands behind his head, on his thin pillow. ‘I don’t have an occupation. I never had time to learn one. When I first came in here I met an inmate that had been a bounty hunter. He always went after men who were wanted dead or alive. And he never took them in for trial.’
‘He killed all of them?’
‘He only went after killers. He felt no remorse about it. I’d feel the same way. After what I’ve seen.’
‘How did he end up here?’
‘Some gambler back-shot his best friend, and he vowed he would take him down the same way. He found the gambler, put a bullet in his back, and was arrested for murder by a sheriff who hated bounty hunters.’
‘But he isn’t here now?’
‘He broke out a year ago, and they shot him dead in a marsh just a mile from here.’
This time the silence was deafening.
‘And you’d like to do that for a living?’ Corey pursued.
Sumner shrugged in the dark. ‘I doubt they’d hire me for a town marshal.’ He grinned to himself.
Corey grinned, too. ‘I see what you mean. They’d figure you for the lawless breed. Because of this.’
Sumner grunted. ‘It puts you in a pigeon hole that’s hard to crawl out of.’
After a moment, Corey responded. ‘I don’t give that sort of thinking credence. You’ll do to tie to, Sumner.’
Sumner looked up toward the upper bunk. ‘Go to sleep, kid. We’ve got another day in this hellhole tomorrow.’
‘Good night, Sumner,’ his young voice came from above.
The next day Sumner and Corey Madison were taken to the mess hall together, shared a bowl in the washroom, and visited the big prison yard together for their daily airing. A couple hundred of other prisoners milled about in the gravel yard with its high concrete walls all around. Watch towers stood ominously at each corner of the walls, with men holding rifles at ready. Each tower also had an impressive-looking Gatling gun aimed at the center of the yard.
‘I hate this place,’ Corey complained to Sumner as they stood in the spring sun together, enjoying the way it felt on their backs.
‘How would you like it for a few years?’ Sumner suggested acidly.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ Corey said glumly, his red hair glinting in the sun. Sumner thought he looked particularly young out here in the daylight. ‘I’d probably try an escape, like that fellow you told me about. And end up dead in a mucky swamp.’
‘You adjust,’ Sumner said, remembering. ‘You hunker down, and you say it won’t beat you. And you find out you can survive.’
‘I still don’t see how you did it,’ Corey admitted. He stretched his arms out and took in a big lungful of fresh air. ‘I need to be in the open.’
Sumner smiled slightly. ‘Then you better stay out of trouble, kid,’ he said.
At that moment, a large bald inmate walked over to Sumner and addressed him. ‘Hey, Sumner. I hear you’re out of here soon.’
‘I’ll be gone Saturday,’ Sumner told him. ‘Oh. This is Corey. They put him in with me. He’s out tomorrow.’
The big fellow looked Corey over. ‘Are you even out of grade school?’
Corey’s face flushed. ‘I’m almost eighteen!’
The newcomer laughed softly, then turned back to Sumner. ‘I got something to ask you, Sumner.’ He glanced again at Corey.
Sumner nodded, and guided him off to one side. ‘You stay put, Corey.’
Corey frowned but nodded.
A few feet distant from Corey, the other inmate handed Sumner an envelope. ‘Would you mail this for me when you get outside? I’m not sure my letters are getting to my wife. If she don’t hear from me, she might just take off and I’ll never see her again.’
Sumner nodded. ‘Of course. Unless they find it on me.’
‘Much obliged. You’re the only one I’d trust it with.’
Sumner stuffed it into a pocket of his prison shirt. He started to make a parting comment to the other man when he heard Corey’s voice behind him.
‘Hell, no! Get to hell away from me!’
Sumner turned to look, and saw that Corey had been accosted by a large Mestizo who had given Sumner trouble on his arrival years ago.
‘Hey, come on, little putito. You meet me in the C Block washroom tonight at grub time, sí? We have us a little fiesta. You know, party!’ He reached out and touched Corey’s shoulder.
Corey threw the hand off him, scowling. ‘I told you. Keep away from me, you goddamn greaser!’
The crooked grin on the Mexican’s face slid into a fierce scowl, and in the next moment, a short-blade knife appeared magically in his hand.
‘You can cooperate, or I will find you alone and cut your liver out and have it for cena, my evening meal.’ In a menacing tone.
Sumner walked over to them. ‘Are you up to your old habits again, Gomez?’
Gomez cast a brittle look on him. ‘Oh, you. Keep out of this, Sumner. He is mine, or he is muerte.’
‘If he’s yours, you are muerte,’ Sumner said in a hard voice. A few other inmates had gathered around quietly. The whole prison knew that Sumner was in for multiple murder, and that he had made Gomez back off once before, in a knife fight.
Sumner’s friend who had given him the letter now stepped up beside him. He was a big, muscular fellow with a scar across his lower face. ‘That goes for me, too,’ he growled ominously at Gomez.
Gomez looked from Sumner to the big man. ‘So that is the way it is, Walcott.’
‘That’s the way,’ Walcott answered grimly.
Gomez hesitated, then put the knife away. He turned to Sumner fiercely. ‘You are afortunado, Sumner. That you leave this week.’
‘That’s the way I look at it,’ Sumner retorted.
Gomez moved off then with a couple of Mexican cohorts. When they were gone, Walcott grinned at Corey. ‘You should have come with a nursemaid, kid.’
Corey frowned through his relief. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Sure,’ Walcott said. ‘And that moon that comes up tonight is made of Swiss cheese.’
Corey looked at the ground, frowning. ‘That saucy line don’t impress me, mister.’
Walcott chuckled. ‘It’s good you’re getting out of here tomorrow, kid. You wouldn’t last a month here.’ He turned to Sumner. ‘Don’t forget that letter, Sumner. And thanks.’
‘My pleasure,’ Sumner told him. He waited until Walcott was gone, and turned to Corey. ‘You got clabber for brains, boy?’
Corey looked hurt. ‘Now you’re on me?’
‘You have one day left. When somebody like Gomez threatens you in those circumstances, you work him. Appease him. Put him off. He probably doesn’t even know you’re leaving. Fake him off his feet.’
‘You didn’t. I heard all about it.’
‘I had years ahead of me. Positions had to be taken.’ A whistle had blown, and other inmates were filing back inside. ‘You stick to me like glue till you’re released tomorrow. Then if I’m lucky I won’t ever see you again.’
‘That ain’t very friendly.’
‘Hey, I saved your butt once already this morning. What the hell do you want for one day?’ He gave the youngster a wry smile. ‘Come on, kid. We’re due back at the cage.’
Corey sighed. ‘It’s like a goddamn zoo,’ he uttered bitterly.
The next twenty-four hours passed uneventfully, because of Sumner’s defence of Corey in the yard, and Corey said goodbye to Sumner in their cell.
‘You be careful out there now,’ Sumner advised him. ‘No more saloon brawls for a while. Just go home and take care of your sister.’
Corey held a bag of personal items under his arm. He stood beside Sumner’s bunk awkwardly. ‘Well. I hope we meet up outside some time, Sumner,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Sumner replied, sitting on the edge of his bunk.
‘It’s been an honor bunking with you.’
Sumner looked up at him, marveling at his youth and innocence. Actually, t
here were barely six years’ difference in their ages. But Sumner had had the experience and trauma of two decades thrust into less than one.
‘I appreciate that, Corey. Watch out for the law now.’ A tired smile.
A moment later, a guard came and got Corey and he was released and gone. Now the cell seemed very empty without him, and Sumner felt a little lonely for the first time in years. But his time was very short, and Saturday came storming at him before he really wanted it to be there. He was not prepared for release, he suddenly realized. He had not had a life when he came there, so there was nothing to go back to now. It was a little unsettling. He knew what each day brought him while he was here. After release, he had no idea. That thing he had discussed with Corey about taking up hunting other men for the bounties on their heads was just misguided expectation. He had almost no skill with a gun. He didn’t even own one. He didn’t know a Colt from an Enfield.
There was a very brief meeting with the warden that Saturday, who bored him with a prescribed lecture on recidivism. It ended with the warden’s observation that he fully expected to see Sumner back there in the near future. Sumner carefully held his tongue, and a half hour later, was escorted to the big front gate by a guard.
‘See you soon, Sumner.’ The fellow grinned.
Then Sumner walked out of the gate into a bright sunny day. He stretched his arms out to receive the luxury of spring, and took a deep breath in. Then he glanced to his left and saw Corey Madison sitting against the wall, grinning at him.
‘What the hell!’ Sumner exclaimed.
‘Hi, Sumner.’ Corey rose to his feet, looking gangly in his home clothes: a checked shirt under a plain vest, and denim trousers.
Sumner looked past him and saw two roan stallions, both saddled. He walked over to Corey and the boy came and lightly embraced him, making Sumner frown. He ignored the gesture and looked Corey over.
‘You look somehow more mature in those clothes.’
‘They used to belong to my daddy. Before he died. My sister found them for me. Look. I got us mounts.’
